Hyperborean

News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch set the Internet abuzz Monday after an interview appeared online in which he said the company is considering blocking Google from being able to search its Web sites. (…)
(…) “I think we’ve been asleep,” he said. “It costs us a lot of money to put together good newspapers and [...]


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The accused, Radovan Karadzic, knew throughout the course of the 44-month siege that his forces were shelling and sniping at civilians and creating conditions of terror for the citizens of Sarajevo
Eduard Limonov, now of “Other Russia” opposition, seen here on the hills above Sarajevo. Next to war criminal Radovan Karadzic. Limonov, now an “opposition activist”, [...]


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“Ultimately, what separates a winner from a loser at the grandmaster level is the willingness to do the unthinkable. A brilliant strategy is, certainly, a matter of intelligence, but intelligence without audaciousness is not enough. Given the opportunity, I must have the guts to explode the game, to upend my opponent’s thinking and, in so [...]


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Can you recall a moment when you could honestly say ‘I told you so’ to lots of people or even yourself for that matter, but when noone listens? Well this just might be one of those for me.
For those mortal bipedal, carbon-based humanoid lifeforms with any significant level of complexity in their neo-cortical pathways who didn’t [...]

A neuro-headset which interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain will go on sale later this year.
“It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer,” said Tan Le, president of US/Australian firm Emotiv.
“It allows the user to manipulate a game or virtual environment naturally and intuitively,” she added.
The [...]

Staying the Course: Part II - Zeitgeist Europe ‘09
The panel explores those improbable events that the marketplace under-assesses but which end having a powerful and unanticipated influence for investors. 
Taleb author of brilliant book The Black Swan says “the more you study economics the less competent you’re going to be…. the past is not similar to [...]

And you thought analog *print* had some problems.

5D Conference : New Television Pt 4 - Kevin Slavin from Dave Blass on Vimeo.

A very thoughfull guy, John Petersen, looks into the future and explains what our societies are facing with the current transformations onset by the evergrowing complexity in the world. Being a remarkably diverse fellow, Petersen elaborates further on the widely misunderstood impact of what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls ‘The Black Swans’ and gives some other [...]

A very thoughfull guy, John Petersen, lookis into the future and explains what our societies are facing with the current transformations onset by the evergrowing complexity in the world. Being a remarkably diverse fellow, he elaborates further on the widely misunderstood ‘pessimism’ that Nassim Nicholas Taleb also shares and gives some other examples, i.e. John [...]

At the New Yorker summit Robert Shiller and Nassim Taleb discuss what to do in such times when the spirits aren’t brave at all. 
Shiller, a Yale economist who famously predicted the last two booms also wrote a book called “Animal Spirits in which he posits that shifts in the economy follow the irrational actions of people. [...]

‘Here Comes the Sun’: the solar energy ‘revolution’ documentary ‘Here Comes the Sun’ an inspiring documentary by Rob van Hattum, made for the Dutch television program VPRO Tegenlicht (VPRO Backlight). If its up to the sun we have no energy problem. Each half an hour sun on earth providesenough for the whole world for a year with energy. We have no energy problem, we have a conversion problem. If we are able to harvest solar power then we can prevent a global energy crisis. “That sounds nice b

Ted Turner, an exceptionally intelligent multi-billionaire who doesn’t claim to understand the dynamics of exponentionally growing complexity of social systems, like ‘the economy’ or ‘the (stock) market’; and who can hardly read a balance sheet; talks with a spaghetti-western alike presence of a hardcore cowboy and is, above all, just a very cool old lad. N.B. A minor note; he also happens to be the founder of an entity called CNN, is still the largest land owner in the US and has been married to Jane Fonda. Probably the most important thing he talks about in this video is the importance of getting rid of the nuclear weapons, after having saved at least 50.000 bizons of course! He tackles, with natural, wild-west rhetoric, the current politics, the need for sustainable energy, population growth, equal rights in the society, the collapse of conventional newspapers… and nuclear weapons.

After all, how can you not like a guy that, for example appreciates the Russians because of their love for ballet, symphony and chess on one hand, and their anthropomorpic drinking habits on the other? And who, simulataneously has 50.000 bizons on his land while having Jane Fonda as a life companion at the same time…
Ergo, Ted Turner is an honest seeming cool old cowboy, philanthropist, billionaire, entrepreneur, media tycoon; with a clearcut worldview and a very pragmatic mindset. 
Check it out for there are plenty far less useful things one could be doing right now, and one most often is doing… 

Quotes:

I like horses, I mean…I love  horses, but I don’t want to have to ride them…cars are better, electric that is.
I like newspapers. (…) The newspapers are extraordinary wastefull (…) you gotta cut down trees (…) then you gotta print the whole god damn thing (…) while you can get the same information on your BlackBerry for free (…) It’s over for news papers, it’s been over for newspapers. It’s sad but that’s just the way the whistle blow

Forget about the hybrid auto — Shai Agassi says it’s electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020. It seems this guy has its act together, very convincing!
About Shai Agassi
Shai Agassi wants to put you behind the wheel of an electric car — but he doesn’t want you to sacrifice convenience (or cash) to do it.

(This is the canonical black swan definition from the canonical “black swan” guy.)
Dispatches from Extremistan (Nassim Taleb talk)
A “black swan,” Taleb explained, is an event which is 1) Hard to predict; 2) Highly consequential; 3) Wrongly retro-predicted. We pretend we know why the big event happened, and so entrench our inability to deal with the next world-changing improbable event.
Examples: Viagra, 9/11, Harry Potter, First World War, Beatles, the PC, Google, and the rise of any successful religion. History is dominated by sudden, lasting changes wrought by deeply unexpected events.
Part of the problem is that we ignore the “silent evidence” of the nonobserved and nonobservable. We compute probability from the success of survivors. No one writes or reads a book titled “How I Lost a Million Dollars.” Another problem is that we revise our own predictions and intentions unconsciously to match what actually happens. We disguise having been wrong by pretending we were right. This is “confirmation bias.”
There are TWO kinds of randomness, two realms in which events happen…
Mediocristan is dominated by the average— one new observation won’t change much. If you are measuring the weight of a large sample of humans, adding the heaviest person in the world won’t change the result, whereas measuring the average wealth of a large sample of humans would be transformed by adding the wealthiest person. Mediocristan is the realm of the Law of Large Numbers and of the Gaussian Bell Curve.
Extremistan is dominated by extremes. Every year 16,000 books are published in English. A handful of best-sellers absolutely dominate. This is the realm of the power-law curve and the Long Tail. Extremistant defies prediction. You can say there will be a few monsters and lots of midgets and the world will be changed by the monsters, and that’s all you can say.
Benoit Mandelbrot convinced Taleb that the main dynamic of Mediocristan is energy, and the main dynamic o

By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Published: April 7 2009 20:02 | Last updated: April 7 2009 20:02



1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.
4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.
5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error

Understanding: The Amazing Brain - The brain’s intricate organization is revealed through real-life stories of a teenager with an off-the-charts IQ and a child with half his brain removed to control seizures. Innovative medical tools, including 3-D imaging, track the brain in action.

Understanding: The Amazing Brain - The brain’s intricate organization is revealed through real-life stories of a teenager with an off-the-charts IQ and a child with half his brain removed to control seizures. Innovative medical tools, including 3-D imaging, track the brain in action.